Tuesday, 30 May 2017

SULAIMANI – The Iraqi Higher
Judicial Council released a report on Wednesday (May 10) saying that the
Islamic State (ISIS) is using remittance companies and selling goods to
the Iraqi market in order to create funds.

The judicial council report also said
security forces had detained a number of ISIS militants who were
responsible for ISIS finances in the country. A number of investigative prosecutors
told the judicial council that a number of the detainees worked in the
group finding methods to receive money. The judicial council said ISIS receives money from rich people in neighboring countries through remittance companies.

“A large amount of the money which is
sent through remittance companies is transmitted to Baghdad,” the report
added. “A person who receives the money says the money has been
transferred to him to buy houses, cars or refineries. It is repeated
twice a month.”

The
report also stated that ISIS is receiving money through indirect ways
such as selling goods to the Iraqi market to obtain money. The goods are
traded cheaply so as to be sold rapidly.

The report comes after ISIS loses
territories it captured in the country during its swift advance in 2014.
The militant group is now facing a big loss after Iraqi forces
liberated the eastern side of Mosul in February. ISIS militants captured Mosul, Iraq's
second largest city, when they swept across the country's north in the
summer of 2014. Iraqi forces have gradually clawed back territory since
then, and launched a massive operation to retake Mosul in October last
year.

Thursday, 11 May 2017

Jihadists snaring starving civilians in Mosul death trap

Baghdad (AFP) - Jihadists preparing for a
desperate last stand in Mosul are booby-trapping homes with civilians
inside and welding doors shut on starving families to prevent the
population from fleeing, residents say. Iraqi forces are closing
in fast on the Old City and its narrow streets, where the Islamic State
group is expected to focus its significantly depleted military
capabilities.
The most violent group in modern jihad has
repeatedly resorted to human shields to cover its movements but in Mosul
the jihadists appear to be taking the tactic to new levels.

"Daesh
came to our house and welded the door. They gave us a small amount of
water and a white cloth and said: 'Here's a shroud for you'," said one
resident of Zinjili neighbourhood.
The woman sent a voice message
to a relative living in the "liberated" eastern side of Mosul and said
she was now trapped in her own house with her husband, her four children
and no food.
Resources were already scarce when the huge government offensive to wrest back Mosul from IS was launched in October last year. After
more than six months of fighting, the living conditions of residents of
the last neighbourhoods IS still holds are beyond dire. A
35-year-old man who gave his name as Abu Rami and lives in the Old City
of west Mosul said IS was desperate to keep the population from running
away.

"They have been doing this lately. When they suspect a
family of intending to escape to the security forces, they lock them
in," he told AFP by phone.

- Hunger the biggest killer -

"They
have detained several families like this here, and in some cases they
weld the doors to be sure," he said. Houses in Mosul often have barred
windows or are built around walled courtyards with a single door onto
the street.

"Those families have a choice of dying of hunger, disease or shelling."
Abdulkarim
al-Obeidi, a civil activist from Mosul, said an estimated 250,000
people were still trapped in the Old City and the handful of other areas
that remain under IS control.
"Daesh is locking doors on families inside those areas that have not yet been liberated. They are detaining people," he said.

He
put the number of IS fighters defending their last redoubts in west
Mosul at around 600, meaning that the jihadists are massively
outnumbered and making the resort to human shields an increasingly
important part of their defence strategy.
"Daesh members have
everything they need because they raided people's homes and took their
food stockpiles," Obeidi said, advocating airdrops to save thousands
from starving to death.
"Daesh wants to sow terror among civilians
with this filthy tactic of welding doors shut on people," said
Hossameddin al-Abbar, a councillor for Nineveh, the province of which
Mosul is the capital.
"There are people dying of hunger and
disease now, especially children and elderly people," he said, adding
that it was impossible to know exactly how many.
"At this stage, hunger is killing more than shelling and fighting."

- Booby traps -
Another
method residents say IS has used to prevent a civilian exodus is
booby-trapping, a weapon the jihadists had previously used mainly to
kill or maim the advancing government forces.
A senior officer of
the interior ministry's elite Rapid Response forces said they had found
several families stuck in booby-trapped homes since the launch last week
of an operation in northwestern Mosul.

"The Daesh gangs are
booby-trapping houses with people inside them," Major General Thamer Abu
Turab told an AFP reporter in west Mosul.

"We found eight such
houses, where our EOD (ordnance disposal) teams were able to defuse the
devices and get the families out," he said.
The jihadists'
deterrence seems effective as cases of families attempting to flee
IS-held areas before the arrival of the federal security forces are
relatively rare.
Many of the civilians who are not locked in by IS
essentially do it themselves and hunker down in basements with whatever
food supplies they still have.
Abu Imad, a middle-aged former
restaurant employee who lives with his family of five in the Zinjili
neighbourhood, said the population was terrified.
"Behind the
walls on the streets, there are rooms and cellars packed with people too
scared to move. And hunger is killing people now," he told AFP by
phone.
"I know some people have started eating plants and are
boiling paper. At this rate you will soon see people eating cats and
dogs."

(IraqiNews.com) The Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt has launched an
international campaign to provide Ashurbanipal Library of the Mosul
University with 100,000 books, within efforts to revive the library
destroyed by the Islamic State militants in 2015.

“The first amount of books offered to Ashurbanipal reaches 1,500
titles of books offered from Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the Egyptian
national committee for museums and the French institute for documents
and social studies,” according to Khaled Azab, head of the BA Central
Projects and Services Sector.

“The Bibliotheca Alexandrina leads an international campaign to provide Ashurbanipal with 100,000 books,” he added.

The Egyptian Library offered Mosul University around 5,000 books before IS burnt the Mosul Library after taking over the city. Ashurbanipal Library, named after the last ancient Assyrian king, is one of the oldest libraries in the world. The group, which considered sculptures as symbols of infidelity,
posted videos showing its members axing down priceless monuments in
Mosul, drawing international condemnation. Reports later showed that
some antiquities were sold out in online auctions.

Eastern Mosul was retaken by government troops in January after three
months of battles. Another major offensive was launched in February to
retake the western side of the city.

Thousands Flee Mosul As End Nears For Islamic State

As Iraqi security forces enter their final phase of the Mosul campaign,
thousands of residents continue to flee the northern city. According to
the United Nations, 22,000 people have fled Mosul in the last week.
Citing figures from the Iraqi government, the UN added that over 11,000
people passed through a screening site south of Mosul over two days.
Those fleeing the city stated the harrowing escape was fraught with
danger, because Islamic State militants shot at them. Over the last
seven months, an estimated 600,000 people have fled the city. The mass
exodus has coincided with the government's campaign to liberate the
northern Iraqi city.

Wednesday, 10 May 2017

The girl whose school was run by so-called Islamic State

Eight-year-old Shifa'a went to school in Mosul, the Iraqi city controlled by so-called Islamic State for the last two years. She says she was beaten on her first day for not wearing a headscarf or niqab.

Her
family risked their lives to flee the war-torn city and take refuge in a
camp outside Mosul, where she dreams of one day becoming a doctor, a
teacher or a journalist.

Young, pregnant and running from ISIS

Ihab was born as his mother fled the battle for Mosul. His father was killed in the early days of the fighting.

Almost 17,000 people live in Al Hol camp in northeast Syria, most of
them Iraqi refugees fleeing the battle in Mosul, where coalition forces
are fighting to retake the city from ISIS.
Among them is 20-year-old Sherine, who left Mosul
last November. Nearly six months pregnant at the time, she, her
mother, brother, and five sisters would embark on a journey that found
them wandering in desert, fleeing waves of fighting and dodging
landmines—searching for a safe haven to give birth to her child.

Escape from Mosul

Like so many expectant parents, Sherine and her husband spent her
first trimester dreaming of the future. “In Mosul, we were planning,
talking about how to raise the baby, so many things,” she says, staring
blankly ahead as she remembers. Then she glances at baby Ihab, her
three-week old son, and she smiles. “He looks like his father, but he
has my eyes.”
But Ihab’s father is not with her—he died in the early days of fighting in Mosul.
After her son-in-law’s death, Sherine’s mother, Noor, decided it was time for the family to leave the city.
“Life under ISIS was like a prison,” recalls Noor. “It got worse and
worse.” Noor, too, had lost her husband, left to raise her seven
children alone.
“We heard about Al Hol camp, that life was okay there,” she says.
“But the route going west was difficult, and I had no money to pay a
smuggler.”

Operating in a war zone: DO volunteers outside Mosul, Iraq

Just after Christmas last year, general surgeon Timothy
Burandt, DO, left his Michigan home to volunteer for the aid
organization Samaritan’s Purse in northern Iraq, near Mosul. Dr. Burandt
spent the month of January operating on patients at the organization’s
newly constructed emergency field hospital and returned for another
month in April.
Because the field hospital was hours closer to conflict areas than
the nearest medical facility, many of his patients would likely have
died if their care had been delayed.
Ultimately, Dr. Burandt operated on more than 100 patients during his
two months in Iraq. This fall, he’ll receive the American College of
Osteopathic Surgeons’ Humanitarian Award for his service. Following is
an edited interview.

What surprised you about practicing outside Mosul?

The degree of injury in a war zone is like nothing I’d ever seen
before. We saw so much penetrating trauma—land mines, IEDs, snipers,
pieces of metal and plastic ripping through bodies. The lethality and
the volume of it is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.
We took care of civilians as well as Iraqi security forces and ISIS
fighters. I learned that many ISIS fighters are not ISIS ideologues. In
so many cases, people were coerced into fighting with ISIS. They were
kidnapped or ISIS had threatened to kill their families if they didn’t
join.

Dr. Burandt (center right with green cap) is in the operating room at the emergency field hospital outside Mosul, Iraq. (Photo provided by Dr. Burandt)

What was a typical day like at the field hospital?

In January, when the hospital was still being set up, it was all
emergency surgery and acute injuries, such as those from IEDs and
gunshots. There were often mass casualties from people who had been at a
market that got mortared or had been shot by snipers. We would have to
see all patients in minutes and decide who went first, second, third,
and so on.
When I returned in April, we were starting to see more chronic
injuries. People would come in who had been hurt for days or weeks but
were unable to get medical care because it was unsafe for them to
travel.
It was more common for us to have a schedule of surgeries for the day
then, though ambulances would show up at any time. We were operating
from 9 a.m. to 5 or 6 at night. Afterward, we would do rounds, see how
people were progressing, and make decisions about when their next
operation would be.

Tell us about a patient who stuck with you.

In January, I operated on a 30-year-old mother who had been holding
her baby when an IED exploded outside her house. She had penetrating
shrapnel in her chest, arms and abdomen. She lost her left arm and right
leg. The baby had been instantly killed, but likely saved his mother’s
life by preventing shrapnel from getting near her heart or most vital
organs.
She was hanging on by a thread in the intensive care unit, but
eventually recovered to the point that she could be discharged. In
April, she came back to the hospital and I didn’t recognize her. She was
a young, vibrant woman. We taught her then how to stand up using a
crutch. We’re hoping that soon, she’ll be able to get a prosthesis and
start walking again.
She lived through something horrendous, but is thriving. She left all of us with a sense of hope.

How did you cope with worries about your own safety?

Samaritan’s Purse did an excellent job keeping us safe. I received
safety training beforehand—hours of online courses on land mines, IEDs,
and so on. When I got there, I was briefed daily on security in and
around the hospital. They taught us how to react if there was an attack
on the hospital. They had bunkers we could retreat to. Ultimately, you
rely on security experts to take care of safety, so you can focus on
your patients.

How did you emotionally cope with all the trauma you saw?

The surgeons try to do as much as they can as a group. Together, we
would decide who got surgery first, who got placed on the four
ventilators we had at the hospital. This way, no one person bears the
weight of making a life-or-death decision.

Tuesday, 9 May 2017

Iraqi forces close in on Mosul with bit-by-bit push

MOSUL, Iraq, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi forces battling Islamic State
(IS) militants on Monday pushed further into northern Mosul on the fifth
day of a new push that initiated a new front in the northwestern edge
of IS stronghold in the western side of Mosul, the Iraqi military said.
The army's 9th Armored Division and elite forces of the federal
police, known as Rapid Response, freed the neighborhood of Harmat and
raised the Iraqi flag over some of its buildings after heavy clashes
against IS militants, the Iraqi Joint Operations Command (JOC) said in a
statement.
The troops also recaptured Harmat's residential buildings after heavy
clashes against IS militants who were holed up in the buildings,
leaving at least 17 militants killed, Qasim Nazzal, commander of the 9th
division, told Xinhua in the western side of Mosul.

Nazzal confirmed that the troops are now initiating a new push at the
edge of the neighboring July 30 neighborhood, which is one of the main
IS redoubts in the northern part of Mosul's western side.
Meanwhile, the federal police forces pushed toward the adjacent
neighborhood of al-Iqtisadi and opened a new front in southern July 30
neighborhood amid heavy clashes with the extremist militants, Raid
Shakir Jawdat, the commander of federal police, said in a statement.
Also in the day, the commandos of the Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS)
made a significant progress in the industrial area of Wadi Ugab in
northwestern Mosul and seized most of the vast area, putting the troops
at the edge of the IS stronghold in Islah al-Ziraie neighborhood, the
JOC said in a separate statement.

The CTS Commander Abdul Ghani al-Asadi told Xinhua that the troops
fought fierce street-to-street battles against IS militants, killing at
least 13 of them, including three suicide bombers, and destroyed two
suicide car bombs. "The CTS forces are also fighting on other fronts; they are fighting
alongside the army and the federal police in the neighborhoods of
Harmat, July 30 and Zanjily which is adjacent to the old city center,"
Asadi said.

Early on Thursday, the Iraqi army and Rapid Response special forces
pushed on the new front from the northwestern edge of Mosul toward the
areas of Mushairfah, Kanisah and Harmat in the northern part of the
western side of the city.

The new push would help the special forces of the CTS and the
interior ministry federal police, who are making slow progress in the
southern part of Mosul's western side because of the stiff resistance of
the militants in the densely-populated areas of the old city center,
where roughly 400,000 residents are believed to still be trapped under
IS rule.The IS militants are now being surrounded by the troops in the
northern part of Mosul's western side, which includes the old city
center. Captain Mahmoud, commander of a federal police company fighting IS
militants inside the old city center, said the new push in the
northwestern part of Mosul's western side has reduced the pressure on
the security forces in the old city center.

Observers say the new push was designed to pull some of IS militants
from the narrow streets of the densely-populated city center to fight
them in less densely-populated neighborhoods with wide streets in
northwestern Mosul, in order to reduce the civilian casualties in the
city center. The new push would enable the troops to advance deeper inside the
city center, in particular toward the old areas around the historical
al-Nuri Mosque in the middle of Mosul's old city center. The mosque with its famous leaning minaret, which gave the city its
nickname "al-Hadbaa" or "the hunchback," has a symbolic value, as it was
where IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the cross-border
caliphate in large areas in Iraq and Syria in his sole public appearance
in July 2014.

Late in January, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is also
the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, declared the liberation of
Mosul's eastern side, or the left bank of Tigris, after over 100 days of
fighting IS militants.

On February 19, Abadi announced the start of an offensive to drive
extremist militants out of the western side of Mosul, locally known as
the right bank of the Tigris River, which bisects the city.
However, the western part of Mosul, with its narrow streets and
heavily populated neighborhoods, appears to be a bigger challenge to the
Iraqi forces. Mosul, 400 km north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, has been under IS
control since June 2014, when government forces abandoned their weapons
and fled, enabling IS militants to take control of parts of Iraq's
northern and western regions.

Front Line: Inside Iraqi Soldiers’ Anti-IS War

Iraqi soldiers waiting to
deploy to the front lines take selfies and tell stories, anxious to get
back into the action after weeks of waiting, in Mosul, Iraq, May 4,
2017. (H. Murdock/VOA)

MOSUL, IRAQ —
The walkie-talkie in the commander’s hand buzzes and crackles as
soldiers line up their humvees and tanks, readying themselves to enter
Islamic State territory.

“Tell all the men to put on helmets,” are the orders over the walkie-talkie. “I don’t want to see anyone without a helmet!”

A few minutes later, many of the soldiers still don’t have helmets,
including the commander with the walkie-talkie, who wears a camouflage
cap.

Five full Iraqi divisions are fighting in the latest offensive to
re-take IS-controlled northwestern Mosul, including the Army, Federal
Police and Special Forces known as the Golden Division and the Emergency
Response Division.

A few kilometers from the battle the Iraqi Army’s 16th division’ appears
gleeful as they get out of their vehicles to wait on the dusty
once-residential street for the next order to move forward. Some men
tease each other and take selfies.

Gunner Ali el-Babli shows a photo of himself after a recent battle, in Mosul, Iraq, May 4, 2017. (H. Murdock/VOA)

“Look at my face,” says 21-year-old Ghaith, laughing. “I’m made from
the same dust and water as this guy. Why is he more handsome than me?”

Tattooed on Ghaith’s arm are the names of two of his brothers, killed by
suicide bombers in Baghdad five years ago and the words “never forget”
in Arabic.

‘Scared at first’
Only the gunners perched inside humvees with their heads and weapons
exposed on the top appear to remain on high alert as we wait. If the
battle goes wrong, they are in the most danger. Most of them wear
helmets.

“I was scared at first,” says gunner Ali el-Babli, in a rare admission
in this world of bravura. “But after two years I’m used to it.”

Five Iraqi divisions are now deployed in
northwestern Mosul, fighting to retake the bulk of the city and surround
the densely populated Old City, which has stalled the battle for weeks,
in Mosul, Iraq, May 4, 2017. (H. Murdock/VOA)

The clamor from the nearby IS-controlled neighborhoods is constant.
Airstrikes crash into buildings and militants fire machine guns at
helicopters overhead. Plumes of smoke shoot hundreds of feet into the
air as car bombs explode. An IS mortar lobbed clear over Iraqi front
lines falls in the field across the street.

The 16th Division has not seen action in weeks, and soldiers tell us the
long days and nights spent in crowded make-shift bases while airstrikes
and mortars pound the militants nearby has taken its toll. The waiting,
soldiers say, is harder than the fighting.

“Just five or 10 minutes,” Lt. Col. Amar Younis tells us as he whips out
of his commander’s office, a card-table set up inside an abandoned
home. “And you will see us beating IS with your own eyes.”

The wait

Around 5 a.m. that morning, more than an hour before the units began
lining up for battle, Salim, a cook at one of the 16th’s bases, had
rattled a spoon in a metal can, shouting at the men to get up.

Most bounded out of bed, bypassing breakfast to grab their gear. But as
the cool morning fades into glaring noon sun, so does the excitement.
The militants’ defense has proven fierce, and a long night of air
attacks has not broken their lines.

An Iraqi soldier points his gun at a Mosul suburb fiercely held by IS militants, May 4, 2017. (H. Murdock/VOA)

IS heat-seeking missiles are threatening Iraqi tanks, the first line of
Iraqi ground forces, and drone cameras show cars patrolling
IS-controlled areas. In IS neighborhoods these days civilians don’t
drive cars. They are either car bombs, or gunmen, or both.

Still waiting on the street to deploy, many soldiers crouch along a wall
to stay out of the sun. Body armor leans against the concrete and
higher-ranking officers have returned to the base.

Orders come to move out, and the men race into their vehicles, engines
rattle and the line pulls out. After traveling a block closer to the
battle, they pull over again. Men get out of their humvees, some looking
deflated. Someone brings lunch, plastic bags full of the usual meal of
rice-and-beans and small chunks of meat in white styrofoam containers.

Chatter turns away from battle and some men show pictures of their
children on their mobile phones. Others show videos of themselves
fishing by throwing grenades into small ponds.

El-Babli, the gunner, shares his biscuits and tells stories of recent
victories. “We took the last area in record time,” he says. "I killed
two IS militants when we liberated the shopping mall. My commander gave
me two days off for that.”

Battle begins

Some men are still eating when the orders finally come in the early
afternoon. Styrofoam trays are cast aside and the row of vehicles
dissipates in a matter of minutes. They head for the fields surrounding
an isolated suburban neighborhood on a hill. Parked at the base of the
hill are cars and trucks that may or may not be laden with explosives.

After taking back this field from IS, trucks plow
down IS barriers to allow humvees to move into the fight, in Mosul,
Iraq, May 4, 2017. (H. Murdock/VOA)

A technical team of about five men enter the field on foot, searching
for IEDs among the weeds. Tanks rumble to the front, parking in a row a
couple of hundred meters from the IS-held neighborhood. The cacophony
of battle sounds continues, as black smoke from another division’s
battle streams into the sky.

About 20 civilians attempt to escape the hill, fleeing with a white flag in front of them.
"See those buildings over there?” says Lt. Col. Younis after firing a
machine gun. “We are going to take those buildings and we are going to
sleep there tonight.”

The hours that follow are painstaking, with tanks and other vehicles
re-positioning themselves closer to the militants meter by meter.
Soldiers say the pace of the fight varies as much as the terrain they
fight in. Victory for them will mean reaching the next line on the map
where they again wait for orders.

For politicians, a victory in Mosul will be a defining moment in the
battle with IS. But for the army, it will just mean re-deploying
resources to Tal Afar, an Iraqi city still entirely controlled by IS or
other areas, like Ramadi, where sporadic fighting continues.

“After this fight there will be more wars to win,” says Major Abass Aziz.

Whatever Happened to the Plan to Defeat ISIS?

On Jan. 28, President Trump ordered
Secretary of Defense James Mattis to devise a plan, within 30 days, on
how to defeat ISIS. Mattis turned in his report on Feb. 27, and,
according to senior officials, it is still sitting in the White House.
In the 70 days since it landed on his desk, Trump has not responded to
it, modified it, or approved it as policy.

In other words, despite Trump’s claim during the election campaign
that he had a plan for beating ISIS, and his later claim that he would
ask the generals if they had a better idea and act on it quickly if they
did, the administration has no plan—no overarching strategy—for
defeating the fighters and propagandists of the Islamic State.

Mattis’ plan, according to officials who have seen it, is a
“whole-of-government effort,” addressing not just the battle in Syria
and Iraq but also the need for political stability after ISIS is
defeated and a diplomatic settlement, including humanitarian assistance,
throughout the entire region.

The absence of a presidential decision on the plan weighs heavily as
the combatants slog through the final—in some ways, most brutal—round of
fighting in Mosul. Even before Mattis finished his report, Trump
loosened controls on U.S. commanders in the field, letting them decide
on their own whether to drop bombs on targets in populated areas. The
“rules of engagement” weren’t changed, nor did commanders start ignoring
the laws of warfare. But whereas President Obama would often rule on
whether to bomb or refrain if there was some chance that an airstrike
would kill civilians, Trump has let the officer in the field calculate
the probabilities and decide whether they’re too high, or low enough, to
order an attack.

This may be one reason for the recent surge of civilian casualties in
Mosul. In this latest phase of fighting, ISIS militiamen have often
herded residents—those who have stayed—into a building, then put a
sniper up on the roof. The idea is either to deter Iraqi soldiers and
U.S. fighter planes from bombing the building, knowing that dozens of
civilians would die—or to lure them to destroy the building, in the hope
that the survivors and the relatives of those killed will blame the
Iraqis and the Americans for the carnage, thus reigniting opposition to
the Baghdad government and the U.S. military.

The ISIS commanders seem on the verge of defeat in Iraq; the battle
for Mosul is their last stand. But they also understand that the war is
shifting to a new phase—to the struggle for who controls Iraq (and
Syria) even after they’re diminished or defeated on the battlefield. And
they are fighting in a way that has the best chance of sustaining the
chaos and instability—conditions on which their rebellion thrives.

In fact, all the local combatants are positioning themselves for the
next phase. The fighting in Mosul is so intense, in good part, because
one of the leaders in the anti–ISIS coalition, the Popular Mobilization
Forces (PMF), wants it to be intense. On paper, the PMF—which comprises
more than one-third of the allied fighters in Mosul—has been
incorporated into the Iraqi army, but in fact, it remains true to its
origins as a Shiite militia, backed by—and loyal to—Iran.

During the run-up to the battle for Mosul, U.S. military advisers
wanted to keep a route clear, so that ISIS militias could evacuate the
city. First, it would be easier to pummel the militias out in the open
than to engage them in door-to-door urban combat. Second, fewer
civilians trapped in the city would be killed, and fewer homes would be
destroyed.

But, according to a senior officer involved in these discussions, the
PMF leaders rejected the advice. Their goal, all along, has been to
establish Shiite dominance throughout Iraq—especially in the province of
Nineveh, of which Mosul is the capital. They want to punish Mosul, a majority Sunni city. And they want
to weaken the Iraqi Security Forces, the country’s established army,
which has taken the brunt of casualties in the urban war of attrition,
thus leaving the PMF as Iraq’s dominant military force.

So the noose was wrapped entirely around Mosul, with no escape
routes, and ISIS dug in to fight. The Iraqi army’s approach to this sort
of battle plays right into the PMF’s desire for maximum destruction. As
they have shown in previous battles over the years—Ramadi, Fallujah,
Bayii, and Sinjar—Iraqi officers don’t bother with the delicate task of clearing
buildings that the enemy occupies. Instead, they flatten the buildings,
then occupy the rubble. That’s what has happened in Mosul; it has made
the fighting more intense, and it will make the recovery more prolonged
and difficult.

The combatants’ rush to position themselves for the era after the
fall of ISIS—whether the era is one of negotiations or further
conflict—also explains Turkey’s recent airstrikes against the Kurdish
militias that have been the United States’ most effective allies in the
fight against Islamic State on the Syrian side of the border.

The Turks see ISIS as a foe, but they regard the Kurds as an
existential threat. This is the biggest thing that Trump doesn’t
understand and that few Western leaders grasp until they look at this
conflict up close. “To everybody but us,” one senior military officer
told me, “the defeat of ISIS is the least important goal.”

This is why, as the defeat of ISIS draws near, the lack of a coherent
U.S. strategy—or, more precisely, Trump’s hesitation or refusal to
accept, adapt, or do something with Mattis’ plan—is such a
source of anxiety. All the other players in this politico-military
fight—the leaders of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Russia, Turkey, the Gulf States,
the Sunni powers (especially Saudi Arabia), and the various militias,
whether jihadist or anti-jihadist—know what their interests are and how
they want the game to play out.

Only the United States doesn’t know, or hasn’t clearly expressed, its
interests and desires. One senior official put it to me bluntly: “There
is no clearly articulated end-point.” Yet this is what strategy is
about: aligning a nation-state’s interests with the resources it wants
to commit to fulfilling those interests. Trump is escalating
U.S.–military involvement in all the battles of the region, but without a
strategy—without an “articulated end-point”—escalation is senseless.

As Trump has discovered about health care and every other issue that
he takes a look at, the fight against ISIS is a lot more complicated
than he’d thought. Mattis has ideas, but neither he nor anyone else in
the administration can put them in motion until the president decides
just what it is he wants to do. We may be waiting a long time for that
to happen, as the chaos continues to spiral and the bombs continue to
fall.